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Wreck survivor finds new passion in wheelchair rugby
Jonathan Horna's life changed in a split second back in the spring of 2021. The 23-year-old was headed from a game when another driver slammed into his car. But at the Shepherd Center, Horna was able to find hope and a brand-new passion: rugby.
ATLANTA - Jonathan Horna remembers the first time he saw it.
"I was like, ‘Oh, is this how we play,’" Horna remembers.
He is talking about wheelchair rugby.
Shepherd Center's team is called, some might say appropriately, the Smash.
"It's very, exhilarating," he says. "It gets your heart pounding a little faster."
Horna, who is now 23, grew up playing soccer, but he had never tried rugby.
"Before my accident, it was it seemed like such a tough sport, a lot of contact," he says.
But to understand how Horna found himself in the middle Shepherd Center's basketball court, surrounded by guys in fast-moving wheelchairs, you have to go back to February 17, 2021.
"I had just come back from playing soccer, and I was with a friend, so I was driving him home," Horna says.
He says he was going the speed limit, and he and his buddy were chatting about the game.
"Then, out of nowhere, this car, it was zigzagging at a high speed, and he hits my car."
The police report and photos of his mangled car fill in details Horna cannot remember.
"They say my car spun out of control, and my seatbelt had broken," he says. "And, I had flown out of the one of the windows in the car. After that, everything went dark."
When he woke up from an induced coma, Horna was at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.
"It was just traumatic because I was like, 'Whoa, where am I,'" Horna says. "The last thing I remember I was driving down a highway."
He was covered in cuts and bruises, both lungs had collapsed, there was blood pooling in his chest.
"I had received a spinal cord injury that left me, um, temporarily paralyzed from the waist down," he says.
Horna spent 2 months at Grady, where surgeons had to amputate part of one of his legs, after a wound from the crash became infected.
By the time he was transferred to Shepherd Center, Horna says, he felt defeated and alone.
"In the beginning, I was very shut off," he says.
But Horna says this place pulled him back.
Everywhere he looked were patients like him.
When he wasn't in therapy, Horna was down here in the gym, trying to build up his strength.
It took a while, but he got back on his feet with the help of a prosthetic.
And, for the first time since his accident, Horna started to feel hopeful about the future.
"It felt like kind of like a good dream that I had," he says. "I've been just waking up and just realizing that I was in a very good place with Shepherd."
Then, last winter, Horna joined the Smash.
"Sometimes when you're least expecting it, there's someone just going full, full pace into you and, like, slamming you and say, Whoa," he laughs.
The secret, Horna has learned, is to take the hit, and keep going.
"I think it's just learning to do things again, learning to get back into how you were doing things before."
And, being part of this team feels good.
"It just gives you the courage to be like, 'Hey, I'm not I'm not as different as I thought I was,' Horna smiles.